He will not be missed at foreign affairs. Apparently unequal to the
task, he had nothing compelling to offer in the face of the most
pressing issues. He shut down the Office of Religious Freedom as
massacres of believers mounted, offering vague affirmations of tolerance
in the face of jihadi terror. By the end of Trudeau’s first year of
alighting at capitals the world over, Dion was reduced to fanboy status,
boasting that in light of the American presidential race, “the world is
counting on Canada to have a positive influence on the United States,
especially when the most prominent and popular political figure on the
planet is our prime minister.” Perhaps Trudeau didn’t want Dion telling
Trump that in person.

I'm sure Trudeau's backers warned the dauphin that Dion was too stupid even for Canadians. There are only so many incidences of corruption and conflict-of-interests that a gullible electorate is willing to take.

Vincent Oliva, the president of the Quebec association of
radiologists, said the majority of private clinics are reluctant to make
any new appointments, given the uncertainty of the new system, which he
says was brought in hastily by Barrette, a health minister regularly at
odds with doctors in the province.

The issue is not about revenue or salaries for the province’s
radiologists, Oliva insisted — radiologists are paid the same salary
whether they are working in hospitals or in private clinics. (In fact
they are the third best paid specialists in Quebec, after
ophthalmologists and cardiologists).

It’s about how the government plans to cover the other expenses
incurred in private clinics — the overhead and the equipment, for
example — and ultimately the viability of the clinics themselves, Oliva
said.

Acting as though people who seek private care are all big whales and/or just plain irritable from having crippling knee pain or metastasizing tumours is a breath-taking arrogance and apathy rooted in the belief that only the government can fix anything.

One woman's plea for the Ontario government to give people a break on hydro rates has resonated with thousands of people.

Libby
Keenan, who operates Sunhall Equestrian Center in Amherstburg, Ont.,
has seen her hydro rates skyrocket. Her latest bill was nearly $600,
compared to the $140 she paid several years ago.

In
an open letter to Premier Kathleen Wynne, which was posted to Facebook,
Keenan candidly shared her frustrations with taxes, tolls, government
fees and hydro.

"I
work hard, seven days a week," she wrote. "I live exceptionally
frugally, I have spent 30 years paying off a mortgage on a beautiful
farm I can barely afford to keep. My heating and hydro costs are much
higher per month than my mortgage."

Her post has been shared more than 20,000 times and has drawn nearly 3,000 comments.

"I was a little surprised, then I was a little overwhelmed," Keenan said about the popularity of her letter.

Keenan
was also taken back by the number of women her age that had similar
stories about struggling to pay their hydro bills. Dozens of women
between the ages of 58 and 69 reached out to Keenan, sharing their
experience.

Before
the overwhelming response to her letter, Keenan felt a level of shame
as she realized she was slowly moving out of the middle class to being
more poverty stricken.

"What
I realized is how many people in this province are going through the
very same thing," she said. "I felt much less alone, for one thing."

China's President Xi
Jinping will promote "inclusive globalization" at this month's World
Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos and will warn that populist approaches can
lead to "war and poverty", Chinese officials said on Wednesday.

Let’s be clear: Hillary Clinton did not lose the 2016 election because
of Russian meddling or WikiLeaks. And here is the proof: WikiLeaks began
publishing its trove of Democratic National Committee emails on July
22, 2016, three days before the Democratic National Convention. By then,
Hillary Clinton was already in a deep hole with American voters. ...Which is why it is so puzzling the Trump team keeps trying to call into
question the ODNI report’s conclusions that Russia was behind the DNC
hacking effort. Trump should embrace those conclusions instead. He
should point out that the report is a searing indictment not of him, but
of Obama, and that Russia’s actions are a direct result of Obama’s
weakness on the world stage. That would be a much smarter approach than
questioning the integrity of the intelligence community he will have to
lead in less than two weeks.

I don't believe that the Russians rigged the election or destroyed Hillary Clinton's career. They didn't need to do any of that because the Americans could handle that on their own.

Europe’s court of human rights has rejected an appeal by a
Turkish-born couple who were fined in Switzerland for keeping their
daughters out of mixed-gender, mandatory public-school swimming lessons
for reasons linked to their Muslim faith.

The European Court of Human Rights decision upholds a Swiss federal
court ruling that education officials had not violated the family’s
rights of freedom of conscience and religion in the case in Basel dating
to 2008.

On 3 January this year, that store shut its doors, marking the end of an
era, and adding to the increasingly long list of Krispy Kreme store
closures around the country. The doughnut and coffeehouse chain
is hoping things will pick up in the near future, though, with a brand
new limited-edition collection doing its very best to make lovers of
sweets weak at the knees.